MPs' report slams Labour’s ‘betrayal’ of pensioners over care costs

The elderly are being let down by chronically underfunded and poor quality state support, a report by MPs has concluded.

They condemn Labour for betraying pensioners and wasting 13 years in power by doing nothing to address the scandal of older people having to sell their homes to pay for residential care.

The health select committee demanded that ministers immediately raise the threshold at which people have to start paying for their own care.

At present, anyone with assets of more than £23,500 must contribute to the cost of residential care - meaning thousands have to sell their homes every year.

Labour's plans for social care funding, which include the prospect of a 10 per cent 'death tax', were rubbished as 'fundamentally flawed' by the committee which accused ministers of making policy 'on the hoof'.

Hundreds of thousands of pensioners will also lose out if the Government scraps the non means-tested attendance allowance disability benefit and replaces it with a wholly means-tested system, they said.

The report added that the issue was too important for 'political point-scoring' and called on the parties to seek consensus early in the next Parliament to deliver fundamental reform.

A failure to do so would 'betray current and future generations' - and could prove disastrous as those from the baby boomer generation enter their 80s over the coming decades.

The MPs attacked the system of elderly care funding, saying: 'People who need care and support encounter various forms of rationing, including eligibility criteria, means-testing and charging, with much local variation

'The result is a social care system that excludes many people with less severe care needs, penalises people with relatively modest financial means, places unfair and unreasonable demands on carers, and varies geographically to an extent that is strongly perceived as unfair'.

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Despite Labour's 1997 election manifesto labelling care and support for the elderly as a top priority, a green paper was not published until last year. But the committee says its recommendations are 'significantly flawed'. 'The capital thresholds in the means test must be substantially raised in order to ease the burden on people of relatively modest means,' it said.

In the first edition of yesterday's Daily Mail, a quote was wrongly attributed to Health Secretary Andy Burnham. It was Liberal Democrat health spokesman Norman Lamb who said: 'Is it fair someone living in a small semi, who has worked all their life but is not rich, pays the same for care in old age as millionaire couple living in a mansion?' We are happy to make this clear.